I first built this truck in 2004, its undergone many changes over the years. What started out as a shiney shelf queen quickly turned into a quest for the most powerful, best handling emaxx.

March
04

After
finally getting enough power in the truck the rear diff
has decided to leave
the building so I have ordered (reluctantly) the unlimited
engineering 8 spider diff kit, the biggest they do.
Sadly UE was a little un helpful in that they wouldn't let
me order from them as Im outside the USA, so I had to deal
with HSNJ. The gear ratio is now a little lower than before, I was
running 21/70, ive gone up to 24/70, but I think I will
have to change the spur for a 66 I have as it lifts the
front a little to easily in 2nd gear and at that speed you
have to be quick to catch it before the wind gets under
the truck and flips it.

17th
April 04

Ive
managed to get a 60 tooth
RC10GT spur gear on using two sets of slipper pegs and
the standard traxxas slipper plates. Looks ok, I think it'll
hold up ok, gonna use a 23 pinion which will be the same as
25/66, ish. Also I had spaced one of the plates on the ally
transmission case with a washer on each screw as it seemed
a little tight to me, but I have now made a proper
gasket out of plastic (pvc) only 1mm thick but enough
to make it run free.

21st
April 04

Got
the idlers in and
rebuilt the truck, just waiting on the pinion, although I
can test run it with my 21t, just be a bit undergeared.

18th
May 04

Better
weather here now, ive been running the truck quite a bit and
its been ok, except for today, geared it 24/60 (very high)
and did some high speed passes. As it gets up to speed the
tyres ballon and increases the speed still further making
it nearly uncontrollable, on slowing down the massive weight
transfer is too much and truck starts to spin. This may be
solved by suspension changes at the front end (thicker oil
most likely) but not really an issue as we wont be going this
quick again. On the 4th or 5th pass the speed controller decided
it had had enough and poped, fizzed, smoked and then caught
fire. I would have hoped it'd thermalled before that but there
you go. So ive sent it back to schulze and ordered another,
this will be conservatively geared on 60/22 - 66/24 which
seems to be ok, but forgive me if i give it a cooling down
period every 3 minutes.

7th
June 04

Well
I got the new speedo through and put it back on the 24/66
gearing, a safe bet me thinks, Gave it a quick blast up the
road, god its quick, no smoke either so a successful test
run all in all. I will be changing some elements of the truck
soon in the shape of UE suspension and GA bulkheads, which
means the old stuff will be up for grabs!

23rd
June 04

Got
another new speedo through and also the old
one looking a little worst for wear. Needless to say schulze
laughed at me when I mentioned the word "warranty"
claiming that de-soldering the battery plugs was wrong and
the motor conection was too wobbly. Not much I could do about
this really and to be honest it had been in a couple of major
crashes so I bit the bullet and bought a new one. Ran the
truck and managed to break
a UE diff outdrive, hmm.... so waiting on a new one of
them now, not a lot, about £10. Changed the arms for UE and also GA bulkheads,
should be a bit stronger, pics soon!

11th
July 04

The
plastic pinion gear has decided to break
up on me, so ive changed gearing to 21/60 as the 21 is
a metal pinion.

25th
July 04

It
seems landing of jumps puts a lot of strain on bits, one of
the wheels rounded out in the week but I think this was general
wear and tear. I was jumping the truck 4-5 feet in the air
today and after the 8th or so landing the spur gear left the
building. I think this is half due to the shock and half to
the heat of the motor, the pinion gear was really hot, seems
like it'd melted the spur
gear! So im now looking for a small metal spur gear or
possibly the mod 1 gears as that has a metal spur.

30th
July 04

Added some more
video's, my clutch is the new weakest link next to the wheels,
ive rounded out 2 of the rear wheels now but they last ages
and are pretty cheap. The clutch on the other hand has to
be done up real tight as with any slip it seems to get too
hot and starts to melt stuff. The motor get so hot after a
continous run (7-8 minutes) that the pinion starts to melt
the spur, its not good to push it this hard so I tend to let
it cool for a minute or so half way through my run. The other
alterrnative would be to gear down a bit, but thats just too
boring! Ive decided to try the Strobe
slipper with the mod 1 gears, wont stop the hot pinion
problem but it will allow for a little bit of slip without
the thing melting.

24th
Augt 04

The truck has
been running well, I have a new servo and some UE Racer X suspension to go on, then I need to strengthen the wheelie bar as its
taken a bit of a pounding recently, a bit like my shocks!

22nd
Sept 04

Havn't driven
it much but I have got a fantastic little device!!! No more need for a receiver
battery pack! just put between 6.5 and 40volts into this and
it gives you 6v @ 3 amps out! is that cool or what, its called
a UBEC and you can get them from www.koolflightsystems.com

14th Oct 04

The UBEC thingy
does its job very well, the servo's are getting a good 6volts
under load unlike the AA's I was using so my Airtronics servo
is working much better. The only thing is I had it mounted
under the receiver at first, like touching it, and the "noise"
from it was creating major interference. So ive moved it to
up by the speedo and now it works flawlessly. Ive now got 4 UE racer shocks on with 80wt in to reduce weight on the truck, I was worried
about them not coping with jumps in this heavy truck but they
work better than the 8 integy ones if anything.

25th
Oct 04

Happy with the
4 shock setup, just tuning the suspension to work a bit better.
I broke another wheel the other day!!! The hex hub spins in
the wheel and rounds the hex shaped hole out. So I bought
new wheels and drilled through the side where the hub hex
sits and the tap the whole and screw through the wheel and
metal hex hub...... clear as mud, here are the pics 123.

3rd
Dec 04

The Weather is
bad, trying to drive it at much as I can but its sooooo wet
out there. I bought some "show off" wheels that
i'll probably never run, 40
series alloys! mmmmmmm lovely!

8th
Dec 04

I put on a set
of 40 series bow ties and my god does it handle, I no longer
look like im just hanging on to the transmitter! It goes just
where you point it, plus they are 100 grams lighter each,
as a result they dont baloon and throw the ratio out when
you get to high speeds. Its quicker too due to less rotating
mass. Im gonna get some new video up this weekend.

5th
Mar 05

After speaking
with my friend Rene, I have decided to try and do away with
the transmission and run with a single gear. To be honest
I can go 2 or 3 runs without using first gear so I dont think
I will miss it, I bought this ofna centre
section this also gives the option of running a mechanical
break and taking load off the speedo. I can also achieve exactly
the same 2nd gear ratio by using a 65 spur and a 13T pinion,
of course in Mod 1 pitch.

26th
Mar 05

I've done some
major work on the center of the truck, I got hold of an ofna
dominator slipper unit and mounted it in the middle of the
truck. It was fairly straight forward, only needed to make
5/6 plates up out of 6061 and then polish it to death! Im
waiting on pinion gears and driveshafts then it will be ready
to roll. The performance increase will im sure be noticable.
If this proves solid after testing I will be selling my transmission
and ultra gears etc. The motor mount I have made is also bolted
to the centre section and has less flex than the gorilla mount
it replaces. Worth noting also that so long as you use a 51t
spur with a 10T pinion the need be NO permanent modification
to the chassis, it can be put back to stock at any time, this
is a bolt on upgrade. all pictures are below (10, 12,
13 T pinions in mod 1 are available here)

9th
Apr 05

Driveshafts are
here, installed and test run seems fine, more testing to follow with videos
and then the old transmission will be for sale.

20th
Apr 05

Transmission is
SOLD, sorry to everyone who missed out. This is a sign that
the new system is working ok, a slight f*ck
up with the clutch too tight, oh yeh and i had a bit of
a crash
too! no major damage, just a skid plate and my pride!
Was running 10/51
gearing but this was giving slightly under what it was
so now trying 12/56

30th
April 05

Finally painted
the new shell, came out just fine, went for the same design,
its almost a trade mark now! running 12/56 gearing, still
ok.

20th
May 05

The new transmission
is running well, 56/12 gearing is good, the 56 spur is from
ofna's 2
speed kit and is not a direct fit onto the dominator slipper.
The holes are slightly out of line, but the main problem is
mounting the gear close enough to the motor, I had to turn
the slipper assembly round and make a spacer for the gear
so it sits flat against the slipper assembly. Ive made a section
below with pics just of this.

7th
Aug 05

The new transmission
is solid, managed to strip a spur gear when the screws came
loose, my fault. New gear and superglued screws seem solid
now. Had another wheel buckle at the hub, going to switch
to 23mm hub wheels and see how they hold up. New video is below!

10th
Nov 05

Some fairly big
changes are going to take place on the truck, Ive ditched
the GA bulkheads and UE shock towers in favour of the very
sexy VBS
setup. Also, im sick of my speedo being stuck on the top
of the trucklike an after thought so im gonna be moving stuff
round and redesigning a lot of the single speed transmission
so I can fit it under the rear propshaft.

21st
Nov 05

Got the speedo
mounted under the rear prop eventually. had the old UBEC unit
sitting under the motor which looked odd, so I now have a
smaller UBEC from here, all mounted
now, just need to trim the top deck.

November
2008

Im still here!
Now running 18 cells for huge power, added a fan to stop the
speedo thermaling and swapped the airtronics servo for a hitec
titanium geared version, 333 oz/in of torque compared to the
Airtronics 200 oz/in. Also redesigning the lower chassis plate to take all 18 cells flat.

April 2009

Finally making the switch to a center diff, the slipper unit is proving to be unreliable, its either too tight or too loose, the extra powe has highlighted this. I made an adaptor to allow the 56 and 60t spur to fit the centre diff, this will let me gear it a bit easier.

May 2009

Finally made a new chassis of my own design, got the motor much lower and nearer the middle of the truck

July 2009

Got sick of the schulze overheating all the time and got my self a Mamba monster pro, unfourtunatly due to it not thermalling I didnt notice the motor getting waaaay too hot. So the bigmaxximum is no more, it demagnetised, i have turned it into a heatsink for the new motor. The bigmaxx was 2150kv, this is a bit high, for my gearing 12/56 was high but any lower and the teeth tear of the spur. The Neu replacement is a 1515 2.5d, this is 1650kv and allows me more scope to gear it.

Aug 2009

Initial test runs are good, started geared 12/56 now up to 14/56 for 42mph. Motor getting a bit hot in there so cut some vents in the front "grill" might have to fit a fan somewhere, dont want anither cooked motor!